Photo by weisserstier

By Maria Liu Wong

This morning when I peeked into my younger children’s room at 7:00 am, I was surprised to find my younger son Josiah at his desk poring over a Chinese textbook. “Josiah, what are you doing?” I said. “I’m reading!” he replied. “But Ms. Chang isn’t coming today. She’s coming next week.” “I know. I’m just reading.”

It was almost exactly a year ago that I was getting ready to defend my doctoral dissertation. At the time, Josiah was getting upset almost every morning, not wanting to go to school. He attended a local public dual language Mandarin school, and during the daytime, instruction was in Chinese for half the time and in English during the other half. I had also enrolled him in the Chinese afterschool program at the school, highly recommended by other parents. The day ended at 5:30 pm, and it was too much for him. He resisted by crying, feigning sickness, and going through a period of (we think) anxiety-related, constant need for the bathroom. And so, our usually happy-go-lucky, brightly smiling son went on strike.

While we knew the long days would be tough, it really wasn’t for him. We believed – and still do – that school is a place we wanted our children to look forward to, and flourish in. In January 2015, we removed him from the afterschool program, and through another parent, found a God-sent Mandarin tutor to help him each week. My husband and I are second-generation Chinese Americans who speak functional Cantonese, so we are not much help to him. So, Josiah got 13 hours of his weekday afternoons back for play, free time, hanging out with his sister, and then getting to his homework. He looked forward to sessions with the Chinese tutor, opting to continue through the summer.

So, what is the takeaway? As I smile to myself now, thinking about Josiah reading his Chinese book this morning, I reflect on the ways that we “think” we know what is best for our children. What are other parents doing? Are we putting our children at a disadvantage by not signing them up for this class or that? The temptation to fill our children’s schedules with activities to give them the “extra edge,” especially in Manhattan, can be strong. But the choices we make as parents are ultimately shaped by the ways God has met us – in a place of sufficiency – as we steward this gift of raising children. God knows us, and what we need, and God knows what our children need as well – the space to breathe.

Fighting the urge to fill up time with activities and instead make space for rest and play is a wonderful lesson to learn. Of course, we were fortunate to have the resources to provide Josiah with a tutor, but the importance of knowing ourselves, and our need for Sabbath, cannot have come at a more opportune moment. As we reflect during this season of Advent, waiting to celebrate the Good News of Christ’s birth, resisting the urge to get lost in the frenzy of holiday preparations, let us embrace this reality of God’s sufficiency in all things and make space in order to fully become who we were meant to be.

Maria Liu Wong serves as Dean of City Seminary of New York in Harlem, NYC. She also leads a women’s fellowship group and volunteers in the children’s ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church Downtown. She graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University this spring, and her dissertation focused on women and leadership in global Christian theological education. She lives in the Lower East Side with her husband and three energetic little New Yorkers, volunteers on the School Leadership Team at her younger son’s school, and enjoys creating ways to make time and space for students, faculty (and herself!) to learn from and with each other.